A Postponed Game
Who: Alex and Quinn What: Lunch for the faithful and unfaithful alike doesn't end so well. Where: At Alex's new church When: An hour or two after noon. Rating: G
Now that they had all made it across to the island, save Jasper who may or may not be returning, Quinn was feeling a little bit overwhelmed with what needed to be accomplished here. The island had...well, nothing as near as he could tell. No lumber, no shade. There was flowing water but they shared it with all of the animals. There was food though and he had to admit - those freshwater clams were tasty. He also knew there was plans on the table to build a smokehouse and then they would kill a grazer. Meat, meat and more meat.
There were so many projects on the go. People were out hunting for wood. Bazzer was reestablishing his tannery, Ken was scoping a lookout spot and the priest...well he was out over the rise, building Christo Redentor or something like that. This island didn't have a snuff on Rio, though. When he actually clapped eyes on the priest, his cross was...well, rough was a word. "Hey there, Father!" he called out, lifting one hand in greeting. He had one of the now-empty baskets in hand, a mixed lunch of milk melon and steamed clams with bloodfruit inside. "Brought something to eat. Feel like breaking for a while?" he asked as he shuffled to a stall at the edge of Alex's work site.
"I can do that," with a start he realized how hungry he was. Alex had rolled his pants up into shorts and though he was still wearing his shirt. None of them were dressed for this weather or working outside like they were. Alex was attempting to figure out a way to mount his cross, preferably high above on a pole or something. He knew the chances of him building a church were low, it was not a priority to anyone except him, but if he could at least get the cross up, it would be a good start. Right now though, it was proving difficult. "Thanks. I didn't realize how hungry I was until right now," his stomach gurgled in response.
Quinn shrugged good naturedly. "Everyone's workin' hard today except me. I figured I could be the lunch truck." He set the basket down between his toes and eyed the cross and then let his gaze skate left and right across the relatively flat space at the top of the rise. It was little more than a sand dune but the ground seemed solid enough. He nodded slightly before offering a smile to Alex. "Isn't there something in the Bible about he who builds his house on sand as opposed to he who builds upon the rock?" He chuckled, garbling one of the more famous passages from the Good Book but essentially getting the point.
"Matthew 7:24-27," Alex nodded, "Thus, everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock. And everyone who listens to these words of mine but does not act on them will be like a fool who built his house on sand. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. And it collapsed and was completely ruined,” he quoted, "It's more of a comment on the church being the rock for a person's foundation than meant in the literal sense," he explained, but then looked around wryly, "Then again...the bible as useful carpentry advice. I wish I could look up if I should make dovetail corners or not. And if so, how to do it properly."
Eating some of the milk melon, Alex closed his eyes briefly, enjoying the juice from the fruit, "How're you feeling?" he asked, turning his attention to the other man. He hadn't been doing so well when he had first arrived, but he seemed to be doing better now. He had made the trek with a minimum of problem, though Alex had done his turns pulling the carts and hadn't been paying much attention to the others.
Quinn settled down and pulled out the steaming bowl of the clams and bloodfruit. It was fragrant, garlicy. "Sophie made this. I know it looks like -" He almost said 'an abortion' but thought better of it. "A bloody mess, but it smells great. I've been handing it out all over the place, waiting for my turn." Blood fruit was sort of daunting to work with but for an American who lived his life amidst Italian-Americans, the familiar scent of garlic made his mouth water. "She even put a pinch of that bird salt in it. Let's see if the little girl can cook as well as she says, huh?" He scraped up one of the meaty shelled clams with one of their own discarded shells. People were scubbing them clean with sand and fresh water and using them as all kinds of utensils. The bowl could hold food or water and the edges were sharp enough to cut meat and the vegetables and fruit.
It did smell good. Really good. "You should eat too," Alex said, offering some to Quinn. There was more than enough here for both of them. Scooping some into a clamshell, he tried to eat it without getting everything all over himself. "Mmm," he nodded, "This is good," it was not anything he was used to tasting, at least not quite like this, but it was good and it was food, those were two important things. "Thanks for bringing it," he'd never had to worry about his meals at home, he'd never had to cook either. Now, he was becoming a fairly adept butcher, field dressing the kills, but he was no cook by any means.
Quinn sipped up some of the bloody, garlicly broth and nodded. "Mmm, not bad at all. We must be feeling better about ourselves if we've branched out into seasoning our food rather than just gulping it down as fast as we can." It was comforting to know that food would always come to them here on it's own four hooves. Hopefully they wouldn't all grow an intolerance to clams and grazers. "I hear there's fish in the lake as well," he told the priest. "Now if only we could get a good community garden going here, we might be in business, right?" He wasn't entirely sure if the idea of being nomadic was still on the table. He wouldn't mind staying here. "And to answer your earlier question, I am feeling better. Ribs are a little tender still, but," he drew in a deep breath, puffing out his bare chest. "I couldn't have done that without wincing last week. I guess the long walk wasn't too much for me after all."
"That's good," Alex replied with a smile, he was glad the other man was doing better and that his ribs were nearly healed, "You look better. You looked like death warmed over when you arrived," so much so that he had nearly given Quinn the Sacrement of the Sick without asking his permission. If he was unconscious, he couldn't say no. However, he hadn't and while he wasn't glad of this, he was at least accepting of it. Quinn hadn't needed it.
"I don't know if being nomadic is the best idea," he began, he hadn't been ardently opposed to the idea, but he hadn't been thrilled with it either. "Establishing ourselves somewhere and then exploring seems to be the safer option," he was all for going out with the others to explore though, "I just don't see how people can be nomadic with pregnant women and children," though obviously, people had been for millenium. He knew that intellectually, but modern man schooled in the rough and tumble urban jungle? No...he didn't think so at all. "Bazzer seems to know more about this than anyone though. He has useful ideas."
Quinn nodded. "I don't know if I was all that bad when I first arrived but that fever I caught after a few days? That was scary. Clay told me I was talking to people who weren't there." He slurped up another spoonful of the garlicy clam soup. "And I don't know much about being nomadic either. Just what I've seen in movies. To me, we're even less advanced than those people. They had tee-pees and refined hides to make the walls of them. They had horses to pull the posts for them. They had buffalo skins to wear in the winters and known safe camps for the seasons. We don't even know the seasons here." Shaking his head, he used the sharp serated edge of another clam to slice out a chunk of melon for himself.
That was exactly it. And Bazzer's statements about there not being the wheel or the pack animal in Middle and South America did not help reassure Alex at all. There was no slave class to draw workers from! Not that he condoned slavery, but that was how he had figured it worked. There was less than 50 people here, substantially less. There was no formal heirarchy. "Well, Bazzer is trying to make the skins," he pointed out, "but you're right. We don't know enough about this place other than laughers are bad and avoid those plants that kill. I think we need more information before we start moving around as a group. Let Jasper or whomever explore, I'll go out with her," because he could keep up.
Quinn nodded. "I could do some distance running too within the next couple of weeks. I was thinking of borrowing some clothes and exploring north. Maybe there's good shelter in the mountains, right? Caves or something. It might be damp but if we get enough furs and those mountains look treed a little higher up..." He trailed off and shrugged. "It's as good a direction to go as any, right? No one's really pressed far that way." He'd hiked the desert hills for years, granted, on marked trails, but he thought he could manage it as long as he was careful about his footing. He'd have to borrow boots though.
"We can train maybe," Alex offered. He had tried to run a little here, but he was worried about the lack of food with the increased exercise and then running on top of that. He didn't want to lose the endurance though either. "Yeah, maybe. Won't know unless we try and go exploring," he also did not offer to loan Quinn his boots. "When we went exploring in the mountains past the forest they became dry. There were caves, but no water that we could find," there had been boots though.
Quinn nodded and turned to the north, peering toward the smokey blue peaks in the distance. "Yeah, but look at them. Even from here you can tell there's life teeming on those slopes." He'd heard rumors about blue stones in the grasslands, some kind of stairs that had remained cold despite the heat. He was curious as to whether those stones had been dragged down from the mountains and used to build the stairs. Only one way to find out and that was to climb.
"Yeah, those aren't the mountains we went exploring in," Alex agreed, finishing his food. He was full. Not stuffed, it was a good feeling and beat being hungry. "They look interesting. Definitely interesting. We need to learn how to use the environment to help us. We're so used to reshaping it to our needs. And that means knowing what it has to offer," he paused staring out to the distance, "Once we are more established here, we should do it."
Quinn nodded decisively, like it was all settled. "I agree. I just need to figure out a way to wrap my feet so that I can risk a mountain hike. Make some kind of shoes, you know?" He polished off the last of his portion of the garlicy clam soup before setting on his half of the milk melon. "We'll have to be careful though. We don't know what kind of cover there is that way. Trees and stuff. Maybe we should press some paper and try to make a rough map as we go." He had overheard the new guy, Aaron, talking about some kind of plant paper that wasn't too hard to make. "That could be really useful. Even if it's not exact, right?"
"Could be a start," Alex knew nothing about maps, "I think we should try to wait for a boat or canoe or something. That water," he shivered involuntarily. He'd been too close to it. He'd been in it. No thanks. Not right now. "I don't think I'm quite all dry yet from my last foray into the water."
Quinn nodded. "It's spring fed, right? So it's naturally cold as hell. We couldn't luck out and land in the middle of a hot spring, now could we?" He chuckled darkly. Oh no, that would be too much good luck for this lot of people. Casually, as they cleaned off their plates, he started to draw a chessboard in the sand. "So, interested in seein' the chess pieces I managed to carve since we last talked about games?" He arched a curious brow at the priest.
"Chess?" Alex inquired, perking up. That sounded great. "It's been a while," he warned Quinn, not that he had been that challenging of an opponent at the best of times. "Sure, show me," he requested, entertained by the notion of a real game. Even a bad game of chess would be better than no game of chess.
Grinning, he pulled out a leaf pouch out of the basket he'd brought the food in and dumped the pieces out. They were not elegantly carved and they were certainly rough but each piece was distringuishable for who they represented. The rooks were boxy square towers with deep balustrades. The knights resembled every picture of a Trojan horse he'd ever seen from the neck up. The bishops were clearly pointy hats with crosses carved in the front of them. The king was a tall piece with a crown and the queen a bit shorter with a bit of a flare at the bottom. Each pawn was little more than a triangle. One half of the set were stained blood red with bloodfruit juice and were pungently garlic. Quinn kept those for his side of the board as he set up. "Like them? Think they work?"
Laughing, Alex nodded, "These are magnificent!" he crowed, leaning forward to clap Quinn's shoulder, "These are the best chess pieces I have ever seen. And the most expensive. So we better not loose one. I like your board as well," the simple drawing in the sand was just exactly what was needed. Picking one up he examined it closer, "Really Quinn, these are better than anyone ever expected, I'm sure."
Quinn gave him a sheepish grin, rubbing the back of his neck. "Well, it wasn't that hard. Just tried not to lop off my own fingers." Now that every piece was set, he gestured to Alex. "White always goes first." He grinned, waiting to see how well the father played. "I haven't played in years myself. I sort of gave up this game for the casino ones but there's a lot of parallels that you wouldn't think of. Especially in poker."
"Really?" Alex asked, selecting a pawn and nudging it forward. It was a conservative opening move, but that was what he wanted, "Can't say I'm much of a poker player, either, but I do play on occasion. I'd be tempted if we had a deck of cards," poker wasn't forbidden to priests, though any winnings were encouraged to be donated to the church. So long as the priest was playing as the occasional hobby or at a party and not all the time or winning outrageous sums then it was alright. Just like anything, moderation was encouraged and while Alex and other diocesan priests did not take a vow of poverty, they were expected to live simply and within their means. Right now...that was very easy to do.
Quinn smiled and shrugged as he made his first move as well. "Can't say I'm much of anything else except a poker player," he chuckled. "I'd love a deck of cards. I'm just not sure what to make them out of. Maybe we could manage some kind of pulp paper at some point." It was something to hope for. They probably wouldn't be a glamorous deck but they'd be numbered and lettered and maybe even two colours if he could find something other than bloodfruit that stained dark.
"Oh come on, you could make dice and we could play craps or something," roulette might be a bit out of their league yet. "Or checkers or something. There's a lot of games and you're really good at this," he didn't mean games in general, but carvings. Making his next move, Alex pondered the makeshift board. "I know Bazzer probably wants paper to record our saga or whatever, I certainly want to record as much of the bible as I can remember, but we can do a lot of things with paper if we can make some." Alex paused, then remarked, "I'll be glad if we find a way to make cloth. Or even clothing from animal hides."
Quinn nodded emphatically at this. His flannel pj pants were already becoming threadbare. His bare feet were cut, scuffed, filthy and he thought they were permanently blue with cold. "I'm not used to being under clothed in chilly weather, that's for sure. The temperature drops in Nevada here and there, depending on the time of day and the location but Christ," he shook his head, oblivious to the blasphemy, "not used to it without at least a t-shirt." He made a counter move, more in to the conversation than the game. Checkers wasn't a bad idea. Carving those pieces would be easy.
"Agreed," he'd been in Boston, but he had also not been dressed for the Boston winter. The rectory was well heated. All he had was his pajama pants, now with several holes in them, and his t-shirt. "This is the longest I've gone without a dog collar. It feels really weird," he didn't talk about that too often to people, but he sort of needed to now. He wanted his collar back as strange as that might sound to people. There was no way right now to do that though and he knew it, so there was really no point in complaining.
Quinn just smiled, a little bit of laughter in his voice. "Do they really call it that?" Smiling, he shook his head. That seemed awfully, well, kinky. But then, he didn't know why he was surprised. Religious fetish was nothing new to the world. "Maybe you'll have to figure out some new visual representation of your church," he pointed out. "You still wear your rosary. Can you imagine that, say, in two hundred years if humans keep coming here, your rosary will be a holy relic?" He pointed to the spot where the cross swung at the end of it's beaded rope. "It might as well be carved out of the cross Jesus was crucified on, for all it's significance here." He slipped his knight out from behind the row of pawns.
"Yeah. Well, not officially. It's the nickname. Everyone thinks priests don't have a sense of humor, but anytime you ask grown men to wear a collar, a dress and then not have sex? You have to have a sense of humor or you go mad. Of course, officially, the Vatican denies it all. That's it's job," Well, it was more like the priestly collar and a chasuble or cassock as opposed to a real woman's dress, but the results were essentially the same. He lifted his rosary from around his neck, then kissed it, "It was only divine intervention I had it with me when I fell asleep. I don't normally," he let it fall again and rest against his chest, "It's something at least," it was his comfort.
Quinn bubbled quietly in mirth for a moment. Especially assuming that men of cloth didn't indulge in things they shouldn't. Quinn knew for a fact that they most certainly did. After all, he'd lived his whole life in the underbelly of America's playground. "I've known a couple with some sense of humor." He'd played cards with a few. He'd walked away with all of the funds of a few small town diocese as well, not that he'd tell Alex that. His mother used to entertain one of the local priests as well. He hadn't been such a bad guy. He'd always brought Quinn baseball cards.
"Really?" Alex asked, somewhat surprised. While gambling and such was not encouraged, it was not prohibited either, though going to the Vegas casinos was definitely frowned upon. A friendly game with friends? Okay. Vegas? That was another thing altogether, "Well, we don't exactly live cloistered lives, just not too many know priests as people unless their Catholic," and not even then. Some said it was harder to be a priest than a monk or nun because priests lived in the real world with real temptations as opposed to the other, cloistered away in convents and monasteries. More and more nuns though were emerging from their convents to work in the real world and were doing a lot of good for people too. He moved his rook to counter Quinn's move.
Quinn nodded, a tough grim. "Yeah. They weren't the best men." He realized he probably shouldn't have said anything. Alex was pretty liberal for a priest, he'd decided, but not that liberal and he thought the father might be disappointed to know how he'd known the other priests. "It's got to be tough to be a priest in the City of Sin, right?" He made his counter move, not really thinking about it. "The cards are definitely stacked against you."
"Pun intended?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. He didn't comment on Quinn's judgement of them. Priests were human no matter how often they and others forgot that and it was not his place to judge people he did not know and would never meet. It was not his place to judge at all. "I'm sure it is. My grandparents retired there, they love it. Live in some senior highrise, play lots of bingo," he shrugged, "I visited once in seminary, but didn't much enjoy it," the city had made him nervous. Not from the size or anything, but the sheer...decadence. The strippers and nearly naked women combined with the alcohol and gambling, it had been too much for a poor seminarian, "I spent a lot of time at the pool." That had surprisingly enough, been the safest place.
Quinn grinned at that. "I guess it's a bit different than South Boston." He'd never been there but he'd seen plenty of movies about the gritty and harsh realities of that small close knit community. "Ah, whatever, right? Our whole lives changed when we ended up here. Now you don't have to worry about drive-bys. Now I don't have to worry about getting whacked. You can continue to minister to the people that want it and me...?" He made his next move. "I've become the gaming commission." He had to laugh at that.
"A bit," he agreed. He loved his home. Growing up there, yeah, it was dangerous and there were problems, but everywhere had those. It had been a great place anyways and the community was incredibly close. To be a priest there, he was the center of it all, faith was huge there too. The neighborhood revolved around the church and he had done his best along with the other priests and laity to serve them as best as they could. "Southie's not like anywhere else I've been," he pointed out, "It's why it's so distinct and so useable in movies. Ain't nothing like it anywhere," his way of speaking had thickened to a very stereotypical Southie accent. Normally his accent was there in certain words, but not so thick as to not be understood. When he spoke with it heavily though, it was almost as if he were speaking another language. "Hey, think of it as an unexpected job opportunity."
Grinning and nodding as he scooped up one of the priests pawns, he had to agree. There was a certain freedom to this starting over. If he was willing to learn, which Quinn always was, he could be anything in this new society. Even an acolyte to the church, perhaps. That thought amused him but if he had to admit it, no one knew sin quite like he did. Not here, anyways. Except for maybe Payne.
Shaking Alex touched his stomach briefly, he didn't feel well. He had been feeling better throughout the day after a rough night, but now something was not sitting well with him. Stumbling up to his feet, Alex lurched a few steps away and threw up most of the contents of his stomach, the bloodfruit coloring everything. Gagging for a moment, Alex sat there, feeling miserable and helpless. "Sorry," he muttered, wiping the back of his mouth and going to sit back down to continue the game some more. "Something didn't sit right," he was feeling marginally better now.
Quinn frowned as the priest suddenly lost his lunch. Sharp eyes noted that Alex's colour had dropped and there was a slick of sweat on his forehead that had nothing to do with exertion now that they'd been sitting for a while. He considered his own guts for a moment, wondering if Sophie had poisoned them all with the clam soup but found that he felt rather digestively sturdy. "You really don't look good, Father. Maybe we should head back to camp to get some water."
He shook his head, and regretted it. What had been a mild achiness that he had attributed to the exertions of the previous night and a mild chill, again from the cold and wet, was now something more. He had thought though that he was doing better than when he had first woken up. There was no denying it though, he felt horrible. "I'm fine," he waved Quinn's concern away, "Don't think lunch sat right. No big."
Frowning in disbelief, Quinn also shook his head slightly. "Well, I don't think you're doin' so hot, Alex. I don't think you should stay up here by yourself." They had no idea how bad food poisoning could get in this place. Not to mention, there was no medicine to help, really. However, Quinn wasn't one to push so he'd leave it at that. Maybe stick around to help out.
Groaning, Alex climbed to his feet. Not staying there sounded like a better idea than being stubborn. There was a fire down at the camp too. And Thorne. The doctor, even if he was severely limited on what he could do, was still a doctor. And whether Alex wanted to be tough and macho or not, he had to acknowledge that this might be a good idea. "Fine," he groaned, "Raincheck on the game?" at least he was standing on his own power and not feeling woozy. That was good.
"Absolutely!" Quinn hurriedly packed up their game and the food leftovers before standing up himself. "Nothing going on here that can't wait a bit," he said. Lingering at Alex's side but not exactly offering a hand, he waited for the priest to be ready to move.
Despite feeling sucky, and Alex had to admit that he did, he didn't feel so bad that he couldn't walk. It actually sort of help in a way to relieve the ache in his muscles, "I'm not sick," he stated, though his tone was almost petulant. "I don't get sick," which wasn't strictly true, but Alex did not get sick often. He tended to keep going even when he possibly shouldn't.
Quinn chuckled at this declaration and certainty. "Well, I appreciate that you don't, Father. Me either, truth be told." He'd gotten sick here, though. It was the memory of that strange disembodied float through his early life that prompted him to escort the priest back to what passed for civilization here. The last thing they needed was for Alex to forget where he was and wander into that freezing water alone.
"You did here," he pointed out helpfully, though perhaps not as helpful since if Quinn didn't get sick and he had here, perhaps by that logic so had Alex. But no, Alex did not believe that. "Ugh," he groaned as they walked, "Okay, maybe a little. I might be a little," and that scared him. To be sick here, even just a cold could be potentially deadly. They didn't have drugs and things to treat being sick. There was no chicken soup and daytime TV, which were not tried and true cold remedies, but were how it was done. Here, they didn't even have shelter, never mind a bed.
Quinn sympathetically patted Alex on the shoulder, careful to be gentle. "Doc Baker's got some moss that helps with pains, I think he said. Let's go see if he's got any kicking around and then maybe we can restart our game if you're feeling up to it." He had a feeling he might be sticking closer to camp today.
Groaning, Alex nodded. That moss might be a good idea now. And the fire if it was going. He was sort of cold. Well, he had been cold since he had gotten in the water last night, but still. Cold. "Thanks," he managed, "Yeah. Being sick without entertainment wouldn't be fun at all," not that being sick was fun, but still. Sickness without games was almost worse than being sick without medicine!